The Shadow of the Dark: The Chronicles of Randy Carter Book 1

The Shadow of the Dark The Chronicles of Randy Carter Book 1 Sonya Lawson SauceBox Press Copyright Copyright © 2022 by Sonya Lawson Cover Design by artists at 100 Covers All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. Contents Note to Reader (CW) Dedication One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three Twenty-Four Twenty-Five Twenty-Six Want More? Acknowledgments About the Author Note to Reader (CW) This book contains scenes that may depict, mention, or discuss assault, attempted murder, blood, cults, death, kidnapping, murder, occult, and/or violence. Please take care of yourself as you read. Dedication To all my Columbus friends. You made the city shine for me. One My van screeched to a halt, rocking forward in a strong lurch as the wild rabbit continued to race across the narrow, wooded lane. It was a close call, for sure. Didn’t need to plaster my white van with rabbit blood as I was dropping off a delivery. “Shit,” I muttered to myself, hoping the red velvet cupcakes were safe in the back. Any order of five dozen wasn’t huge in the grand scheme of things, but I didn’t want to flake on a new client. Or clean up a mess of cream cheese frosting from the back of the van. I eased off the brake and gently pressed forward, following the lane with the dim illumination of my headlights. It was weirdly quiet and dark here. Even if Upper Arlington was a little greener and more suburban, it was in the middle of the city and close to the university. Columbus didn’t get a lot of thought when people considered major US cities, but it was densely populated and bustling for a landlocked Midwestern metropolis—mostly thanks to The Ohio State University’s main campus. “The” is important there; people get real upset if you don’t include it. Something like sixty thousand students rested only a few miles from where I eased down this road. A large amount of people, even if you didn’t include all the faculty and staff who worked there at all hours of the day and night. I shouldn’t’ve experienced the sense of isolation and seclusion. I still did. The secluded part and surrounding land were also definitely different, not like the open expanses of farmland surrounding Columbus, or the rolling green lawns of the large, expensive houses I was passing on my way here. It wasn’t even an address, technically. The client, whom I’d never even met, had given GPS coordinates with their order, which should have made me pause. The order was so easy, and I was hoping to expand my delivery-and-special-event business more this year, so I hadn’t even thought about it. Something supremely stupid, I realized with hindsight as I gripped the steering wheel tight. There I was, creeping down what looked like a long and winding driveway, nearly blind because I had no streetlights to guide me and no real idea what would be at the end of the road. I was to leave the cupcakes and cookies, five dozen of each, in some type of wooden shelter. No set up. No contact. Only drop off and leave. Thinking about it made me more and more uneasy and unsure, but in for a penny, in for a pound, as some people somewhere used to say, I guess. After a few more minutes of tense anticipation, I crested a small hill and found a large wooden shelter nestled at the base of a deeper ravine. A steep descent had me sending good vibes back to my cupcakes once again, in the hope I packed them well enough to stay secure. After I finally parked, I heaved out a breath and let the tension I didn’t realize I was holding slip from my shoulders. Out and around, I studied the cupcakes when I opened the back doors of my van. Nestled tightly and still unfazed in their box. Yay for that. The cookies were for sure fine in their boxes, as I had stacked them tight and secure early, so they fit into two small paper bags with my Warm Regards logo stamped on the front. Seeing the logo always made me smile, for so many reasons. My business was doing well, more than well, really, but I was still new to this. I wanted more clients—more loyal clients. Hence my agreement to make this quick, easy, and slightly odd online order and drop it off in this weird no-man’s-land in Columbus. Out in the middle of nowhere, with no client in sight—not that I knew what this client looked like—there was no need to be in too much of a rush. I made several trips, carrying cupcake boxes one at a time, with the cookies looped on my arms during the last haul. I stacked them as instructed on the large rough-hewn table off to the side of the outdoor shelter. The rustic shelter was beautifully made. Large beams worn with time rose from concrete, with a few dotted in the middle to support the massive roof. The wooden beams spanning the hollow interior of the roof looked intricately carved, with deep gouges shadowing the recesses. It was too dark to see what they depicted, the swirls and lines only barely visible in the deepening night, with only the small light from singular bulbs scattered around the shelter on cords so they swayed slightly in the late-spring breeze. In fact, it was beautiful but creepy, and it became more so as I finished placing my baked goodies on the side table. Looking around for a moment to survey the scene, a sense of unease stole over me, like I was being watched. I stretched up on tiptoes to peek into the murky blackness of the night, but visibility was